 Okay, here we are at the two o'clock clock. Think Tech, I'm Jay Fidel. We're talking about community matters. We're talking about the global community this time with Cynthia Tai, she's a, what do you call it, a human rights lawyer, an activist lawyer who has really put it on the line for human rights. Her foundation is Project Expedite Justice. She operates out of Kona. And she's here to talk to us about how COVID has affected human rights in the world today, which is a big, big subject, hard to get your hands around it. But if there's anybody in the world who can do that, it's Cynthia Tai. Hi, Cynthia. Hi, Jay, thank you for the kind introduction. Well, let's talk about, you know, I mean, COVID is, no matter how you want to, you know, escape it, you can't, it affects us every day all around the clock. And it's troubling in every way I can think of. And it has effects on every institution, everything in the world, in the world. Isn't that interesting how that happened? And it has an effect on human rights. And so now it touches you because you care passionately about human rights. And now you have still another problem in human rights. Can you talk about it? Of course. So let me give you a bit of a backdrop just because it's been a while since we've connected. So Project Expedite Justice, which is, of which I'm the executive director, focuses on primarily four areas. Genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and then trafficking. So they can generally be thought of as mass atrocities, although trafficking is sometimes thought about a bit differently, but they are the four most prevalent problems, I would say that face humanity, not politics, but humanity today. COVID, with the advent of COVID, I should say that we primarily operate in Africa and Southeast Asia. We have a very, very strong guiding and mentoring, knowledge-based assistance program for our local partners. We advocate very strongly on access for justice on all fronts, using all available tools. COVID, while we're working on it. What's operate mean, Cynthia? What are you doing when you operate? That we support local partners and we identify cases. We discuss available legal options for them. They may be regional options, national options or international options. With that full explanation and looking at their case file and they make the decision on what they choose to do with their cases. We provide technical assistance like brief writing, advocacy strategy and help them sort of bridge that gap because many of these communities would like to engage with these institutions, just like our judiciary at home, they just simply don't know how. A footnote for our viewers is that Cynthia actually spent seven years prosecuting war crimes and investigating them in the Hague, the war crimes tribunal there. And then she came back to Kona and started this foundation project, but justice where she is investigating and collaborating with other organizations who investigate, collaborate and prosecute war crimes all around the world. So she can't get it out of her system, I think. No, I think I found my purpose in life and I have to say that I'm not the only organization. My hat is off to my 10 colleagues, my admin support and everybody else that makes it happen. It truly is a village effort. And a big shout out to Kristen Mozella who is our legal and program director who has worked very tirelessly trying to find us a solution for connecting with our clients with lockdowns happening on both ends, shall we say. So for us, connecting is very difficult. It's not a simple Zoom call. We have to consider security. We also have to consider, not everyone has sufficient bandwidth. They're not as lucky as we are in America. For example, our South Sudan partner, internet costume, sufficient internet, which is very tiny, just enough to upload and download, cost him $1,000 a month. Whoa. Yeah, and so for people that live in these developing countries, it's not a very simple solution. So we should be grateful that we actually have the ability to press a button and to connect safely, yeah? So Kristen, I wanted to say that we've been relying a lot on the internet and have identified some sources that operate kind of like airplane internet in as much as we can deliver our materials to our clients, even though they're in lockdown, we would have a box delivered to you and you could still learn and still upload your own materials. So we're looking at very advanced IT solutions to solve our bandwidth issues, if you will. So we've been doing a hamster wheel shuffle, if you will, with the advent of COVID because all of our regular means of communication have just not been, you know, it's not enough. Nothing beats face to face, nothing ever will, but we know that that's just not available to us now. So we're adapting. And the reason why it's so important to adapt is because while COVID lockdowns keep us safe for our most vulnerable customers or clients, if you will, it's also a tool, you know, that is used sometimes for oppressive reasons and also Western solutions aren't necessarily a one size fits all, if you will, for our partners in developing countries, right? Well, now you're looking retrospectively, right? You're looking at human rights violations, war crimes, that have already happened. And you're investigating. We're looking at temporary situations as well. Temporary situations mean that are happening right now. Yes, happening now or have happened in the last year, we're trying to advance, basically. Let me dwell on that for a minute. You know, COVID has in many ways unleashed dark forces in our world. No doubt. A number of countries have seen, you know, the lid come off, the membrane of civilization, you know, gets torn somehow and bad people do bad things with impunity. Right. And I would like to ask you this, I mean, and I have a theory about it, is that when you have COVID, do you find that people are doing more really horrendous, hellacious things in the war crimes area? Are they taking advantage of the fact that COVID is locking people down? Are they seeing it as an opportunistic moment? Yes, it can be manipulated in that fashion. And while some countries, I mean, I think a lot of countries on continent in Africa really recognized their limitations. Let's talk about the good and the bad, shall we say. So on the good side of the fence, a lot of countries really have robust programming. They recognize the limitations of testing of their own health systems. And for that reason, impose lockdown for very legitimate reasons, right? Recognizing resources and all of those things. They've also developed very innovative solutions such as, I think it was in Rwanda and South Africa where they have used, I know Rwanda for sure, so let me stick with that, where they have like used drones to deliver medical supplies to more rural communities. So some countries have really stepped it up. Other countries, I think, are struggling more because of the fragility of their situation. Several countries in Africa are facing transition. They're in that transitional justice period. And with that, a lot of, you know, that transition happened because of human rights advocacy, right? And because of peaceful protests. But now that tool is kind of taken away. Yeah, but it could all be reversed in a very short order. And let me ask you this, in terms of the disease itself, I'm afraid I haven't followed the numbers, but I imagine that although Africa, talking about Africa, got off to a slow start, it picked up. In Africa, I mean, I remember that the number of people in the Lagos is extraordinary. Many tens of millions in one city, and they're all close to each other, and they're all breathing in each other. And so there's got to be an epidemic for sure. And then you find that in a whole country of, I don't know, say pick a number of 50 million people, there might be three ventilators, three. They're obviously not equipped. Right, they're not, that's right. So it's been an interesting situation. They've been hit very, very hard. We've been seeing that in Sudan. And at the same time, they have different challenges. Like for us, you know, it's stay at home, and I would say for people like you and me, we don't need to go to the grocery store every day to look for, to find something to eat. We have the luxury of waiting it out, right? Waiting it out, wearing a mask, and operating fairly comfortably, if you will. But for most people, they don't have that margin. You know, they live in a, you know, tend to a room. They need to go out, they're daily workers. They make their living by selling tea on the side of the road. That, a lady like that can't go very long with staying inside and with COVID restrictions. And also with that comes this inherent distrust of, well, this government hasn't been nice to me for a while. Why should I trust what they're telling me today about this COVID thing that I've never heard of before? So it's a huge educational barrier and trust issue as well. Well, when you have, you know, when you have government that not to be trusted, then the people, you know, well, obviously they don't like it and they rise up, such as they did in Black Lives Matter a couple of weeks ago. But then, you know, the powers that be, the police as in this case, you know, the skinheads, I suppose, they retaliate. And in fact, I was just coming to see you just now and learned that there was a shooting by a young African-American kid of a cop. I forget the state, it was, let's say it was Michigan or Wisconsin, something. And obviously the cop is reacting to the demonstrations. And so what you have now is like a little civil war going on where one side shoots the other and then the other protests and then that side shoots somebody else. So before you know it, the streets are not safe. And I suggest, like you're thought on this, this happens elsewhere too. You can push the people, the people push back and then that gives you cause to violate their human rights in the name of stability and public order. Is this happening in Africa? Yes, I think that what happens in Africa right now, I mean, we can't look at the continent in total like that. We have to focus on, they are different countries. It's a huge continent with many different countries, right? But I can give you a couple of examples about that. I think that for the peaceful protesters, I'll give you an example. In Sudan on June 3rd of last year, there was a peaceful protest. It was called the Khartoum Siddin. It soon became the Khartoum Massacre because the authoritative powers that be, shall we say, got tired of the people's doing their peaceful protests and they were attacked, resulting in many, many missing, many arbitrarily detained, many men and women raped, horrible violations across the board. So yeah, it does happen, of course. I think the issue that I focus on the most really is the effect of COVID in terms of how does this affect human rights activities, right? Their whole power, if you will, is the power of gathering, the power of staging peaceful protests, of being the opposition, of being the critical, the critical voice in the crowd, if you will, just like you, right? But- You can't do that without a crowd these days. I mean, that's clear in this country and it's gotta be clear in countries in Africa because it's the only way, you know, they don't have the same kind of electronic network and so they have to go out in the street. This leads to a big problem. Can you talk about that? Sure, so I think that what we're finding is many of the opposition parties and many civil rights, human rights defenders that are on the ground fighting the good fight along with me and our organization, they've really lost, we've lost our opportunity, our tools and our platform, right? If you really think about it. So, and in what was received in place of that, our emergency order is declaring that you can't, you have to do social distancing or can't drive in a car with somebody. In some countries we've seen, you're not allowed to even have a private car on the road. So people are forced to walk to the market, carry what they can carry and then walk back home. If you can imagine that. So, and resources are being redirected, right? To COVID, medical, trying to find a vaccine, to more medical, the medical sector I would say. I'm not gonna say it's wrong because I believe that that needs to happen but I think that there's also a cost here for human rights and we can't ignore that these are really fundamental root problems that are not gonna go away. What we know is that one remaining channel is free press. And so we've really been focusing on that and it has unfortunately, as you well know, come under sustained attack. If you don't have the freedom of assembly, then at least you have the freedom of speech, right? That's what we hope. But in countries where the judiciary operates and can operate unfettered, shall we say, they will look at the parameters of an emergency law and determine what is proportional, what is necessary and what is right. But that isn't, we are not always working with an independent judiciary. I think that's a million dollar question. Well, and you're not only always working with an independent leadership. What I mean is, the implication of a minute ago was that the leadership would take health care, public health measures in order to sincerely deal with the epidemic. But I suggest that there are a lot of leaders, you can tell me if there are in Africa who don't really give a rip about public health. They see the epidemic as a weapon to be politicized and used against the people. They wanna preserve their power. And so they will lock down things and limit civil rights and human rights in order to confirm their positions of power in those countries. Am I right about that? You are. I think that, I mean, we can't say things in broad rest strokes. I would never dare to do that. But I think that we can safely say that emergency laws, if not well thought out and if not stated with particularity, if you will, are manipulated or can be easily manipulated for political reasons, like quelling the opposition right before an election also used to, let's say move the goalpost of the fact that the election is supposed to happen this year, let's kick that can down the road and retain power, right? It's a seductive, it's a seductive possibility for a despotic leadership. That's, I mean, it's an obvious possibility. Exactly. So, I mean, I think that what we really need to know, think about is that the measures that appear to be legitimate today, they need to, what we know from history is that they tend to stick around after the pandemic wave leaves us. And that's really, I think what we have to be conscious and focused about, are the measures today stated with particularity proportional to the harm and really protecting the health and safety and leave it there, right? And then lift it when appropriate. So you have to make a choice, you have to make a choice on whether the measures that are being taken are mostly legitimate or mostly illegitimate and deal accordingly. You have to make a value judgment on how far these people are going. Yes, I think that value judgments are being made by, I mean, I'm not from continent, so it's not for me to say and I'm very clear about that. But what I'm hearing from my local partners is they are concerned about, you know, the misuse because they've lost their tool and their platform. So I can understand that. Yeah, if they haven't lost the press though, I just wanna go down that path for a minute. You mentioned that the press is still alive and well, at least in some of the countries you're dealing with. Yeah, it is. Maybe under attack to a certain extent. So it sounds to me like there is an evolution going on that in this crucible we have described here that the press is the last bastion. You can't have an assembly, so you have the press and the press speaks for the people. That's right. The press reveals the, you know, the dictatorship and what it is doing in the politicizing. I mean, arguably they have the power to do that, but query, if I were a dictator, I'd be shooting for the press. I'd be trying to undermine them. Yeah, exactly. Well, I mean, I thought of you today because I was actually reading up on a situation and reading a report on Ethiopia and there was a journalist that I wanted to bring to your attention who alleged on his personal Facebook page and on a YouTube channel that the government ordered the preparation of some 200,000 graves. He was summarily doorknocked. The government immediately said that his claims were false. The police, along with the intelligence service, arrested him where he was later questioned on his political views. And they seized all of his, his notebook, his tools, his cell phone, et cetera, without a proper search warrant. And in this particular country, a search warrant is the proper process to seize those items. That's not always true, right? Every country has different laws. He was charged with, he was left in jail for three weeks without having any notice of what if the formal charges were, when he did get in front of the proper judicial body, they said that there was insufficient basis for his arrest and he was arrested, but it didn't end there. Federal police then intervened, re-arrested him for violating a revised anti-terrorism law. And he was released on bail a second time, and then thirdly, released, arrested again for breaching their hate law, hate speech and disinformation law. So that's kind of the way that the emergency law is manipulated. Well, Cynthia, that's chaos. Yeah, it is. If it happens systemically, it is. Yeah. So that's- What can the public, if the public presumably knows about this, hopefully through the press, they're gonna lose all confidence in the system to see it come and go and left and right, never really coming to any kind of stability. That's right. And I mean, and I think that that's even more pronounced in these countries that are facing a transition, right? I.e. an election, or have come out of an ouster and are in that transitional justice period where they're trying to move towards a free and fair election, but then COVID lands on top of them. And it tends to create even more chaos than existed before. Yeah, I mean, I guess it just boils down to trust, right? There's no trust already in what, in the governments. Everybody's a little bit skeptical. Your common citizen, of course, is skeptical and they're not familiar with, you know, Western medication. They don't know what this COVID thing is really means for them and they don't know if it's a trick. Right. So what do you do? I mean, your goal is what? Is to prevent violations of human rights, whatever that may be. And you defined it early on, but what can you do? You and the organization that's on the ground in these various countries in Africa, what can you do to preserve human rights there? Well, to support them. So we realized very early on, I would say my team realized early on, like we can't leave the most vulnerable populations alone at a time when this is a very critical time for their survival, right? And so we have been working around the clock. Again, my hats off to Chris and to try to find tech solutions to reach out to them. And we've been fairly successful in doing that. So what do you do? What do you actually do? You're gonna do some research in the laws of that country? Are you gonna make some calls? It depends. So basically what we do without saying too much about, too much about what we do is we really mentor and guide, right? So we teach the principles of international law, humanitarian law. We talk to our local partners about what cases they would like to bring. We present options. Now we're using all video, et cetera, but we're hoping to advance to more high-tech tools such as the one that I described that provides them with the internet boost and allows them to communicate with us more readily. Those are areas of greatest concern. I don't know if you recall the Darfur genocide that occurred around the mid-2005. Well, it never went away. And it's still going on now. And many of, I mean, they're under transition. Al-Bashir was ousted in 2019, but yet they are still suffering. So do you ever communicate to a particular political official that he or she are engaged in the violation of human rights and that could be construed as a war crime and when this is all over, they may find themselves prosecuted in the egg or otherwise? Do you ever try to modify their conduct directly? Yeah, we try to do like, through our cases, yes, we try to engage. We're very mindful that we don't want to create more tension, right? And so in these transitional governments, we really want to see a win-win situation. We want behavior to change. We want an acknowledgement for those that have been harmed, for example. And so we don't want to further antagonize a situation and we are very, very mindful about that. It's never a threat. It's just, let's make this come together and work. We haven't found that approaching people and telling them that I'm gonna, it's not our country. I am walking into somebody else's theater and I am working with partners that are of a different nationality than I am. So we don't approach it like that. Cynthia, we've talked a couple of times already and I must say I hold you in such admiration for what you do. But it strikes me that when you were prosecuting in the egg and now you're dealing mostly with Africa, African countries, African cities, African governments or pretenders and some human rights in Africa. What about other continents? I mean, is this same sort of thing happening elsewhere? If I gauge myself by human flow, the I-Way-Way movie a couple of years ago, I come to the inevitable conclusion that this sort of outrage happens really everywhere, does it? Yes. Well, I would say, well, we don't always work in Africa. We have a very strong Southeast Asia program. But in Southeast Asia, we focus more there because for example, in Cambodia, you recall Pol Pot, right? So they're well past that transition. Are they out of it? No, it takes decades. So we work there on the things that we can, which is trafficking, and because that's a very prevalent crime, to ask a family to sell their daughter is normal. For the family to say yes is normal. It doesn't mean they're bad parents, Jay. It means that they don't have any options. So we work to protect those individuals and try to identify the networks that are exploiting them as well. Would you say that this sort of thing, this sort of violation, this sort of disrespect for human values is a cultural thing? You talk about how it takes decades to correct it, decades to sort of get it out of town, push it out of the system. Why is that? Why can't we just say, wait a minute, these are fundamental principles of the human experience, stop. Right now, stop. Why doesn't that work? Why does it take you so long? Well, that's a, I mean, that's the million dollar question, right? It's because I think a lot of the root causes are oftentimes not addressed. And, you know, taking a very Western approach, we are very much interested in, and, you know, let's have these individuals that live in X country. Let's strike a peace deal now, you know? And so we're very keen on the output, which is the peace deal, but I don't think that we're really good listeners. And we need to listen more carefully about the root grievances and work more towards like a restorative justice approach where we can really repair those communities that have been hurt, you know, the hardest hit, if you will. You know, Cynthia, I keep on thinking about John F. Kennedy. That's just me. I keep thinking about- A lot about it as well. The Peace Corps. Yeah. And the Peace Corps was more than just helping and build a bridge across a creek somewhere. The Peace Corps was about showing them American values and sort of somehow blocking outrageous things. And, you know, in a limited way for a limited period of time, seemed to me that that really had an effect in many places in the world. Well, we gave it up and we're afraid now, maybe legitimately so, about going into some of these dangerous places and exposing young people a la the Peace Corps to environments where, you know, they could be kidnapped or hurt or killed. And I wonder your feelings about trying to address these root causes right on the ground, just like JFK did, by sending our American kids overseas and having them engage with other cultures on the ground everywhere and instilling a sense of respect for humanity. You think there's a chance of that, would that work? And will we ever be able to do that? I mean, the Peace Corps is alive and well. What I wonder is what happened to, I mean, and I say this carefully, but I wonder about the generation that JFK was speaking to and the morals and values and the things that those individuals who joined the Peace Corps wanted, right? Were they engaged in the process? Were they interested in other cultures? These places that I go to, I mean, honestly, they're not any different from here. And I have actually had more negative experiences in Hawaii than I have outside in the, you know, in any of these so-called scary places. They're not scary, they're people just like us. And if you look them in the eye and you take the time to listen, you'll get there. But I don't know if the profile of the Peace Corps candidate today shares those values. I myself am 55, so I'm not, I don't think of the target audience, but I can say that, you know, I don't know. I think you'd have to pull the, pull that audience. Yeah, okay, okay. And maybe we have an audience like that. I mean, the Black Lives Matter demonstrations do suggest that we have a youthful and idealistic, altruistic group in this country who may have better values than the previous generation. One minute. But you know, I wanna ask you this. I mean, taking all of that and taking what you are doing, you know, on a mission for human rights, are we gonna be able, are we gonna be able to come up with a generation that does what you do? Well, I know that we can only lead by example, right? And I would suggest to you that there's nothing different about me than the next person. It's just about will and purpose. And to me, I think that, you know, I'm not playing in the US political game. I don't care about politics. It's important to know what's happening and it's important to be engaged, understand the dynamics, but I'm more committed to just having a more peaceful world and making sure that everyone has equal opportunity. And so that's where I'm coming from, right? So I don't think that there's anything different about me. I just think it boils down to what you're willing to do. And I would say that as much as I give, I get gold in return because the people that I work with are gracious, thankful, and they have suffered the most horrendous things. You know, these are people, you know, we like to think about stats. I'm looking at my notes. In Darfur, it's 9 million people, 600 health facilities. It's the size of Spain. It's huge, you know? So we just have to do what we can. That's how I see it. Okay, well, you know, you are unusual for me, as you know, but I wonder if you could, we're out of time, so I wanna ask you one last question. You know, there are a lot of people out there, especially including young people who may not exactly know you know, what's going on out there in Africa and other places in terms of human rights, in terms of the way, you know, people have to struggle to simply live. And my view, we have to make them aware of that. We have to make them global thinkers. That's right, global thinkers. And what I would say is good listeners and kindness. You know, let us not fight. I was at the open market the other day and someone was fighting about the mask and I was like, I don't see why that's worth complaining about when somebody's, you know, we're in a safe place. Let us not be entitled and complain. Let us use our superpower for good, right? Yeah, let us appreciate our good fortune. And let us be kind. Yeah, and play it forward. And play it forward, yeah. There she is, now we know Cynthia Tai playing it forward. And dedicated to making the world a better place. Thank you so much, Cynthia. And you know what? We got to do this again. I know we understand all the points you wanted to cover, but we will next time. I promise you that. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Namaste, aloha.